The Dayton Playhouse, a nonprofit performance company located on Siebenthaler Avenue, was forced to cancel its upcoming production of the stage version of Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” due to a cease and desist order the company received from lawyers in New York representing a new Broadway version of the play.
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News Center 7's Sean Cudahy spoke with Matt Lindsay, the board chairman of the Dayton Playhouse, who said they were shocked to get the letter in the mail just a little more than a week before the performances were set to begin.
“There were some devastated faces, there were tears,” he said. “It was just a gut-wrenching experience for me to have to tell the cast that ‘we promised to give you an environment where you can make some beautiful art and we aren’t able to do it.’”
According to the letter sent to the venue, cities with a population of more than 150,000 are not allowed to put on a performance that is currently running on Broadway. The version the Dayton Playhouse planned on performing is different than the version set for the Broadway stage, but the lawyers said putting on the performance here in Dayton “would constitute willful infringement of copyright” and if the show went on, lawyers would “file an action for copyright infringement” against both the theater and the entire cast of the production.
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But research showed Dayton’s current population is less than the threshold and the rights the lawyers are citing are based on the 1960 U.S. Census.
Lindsay said the dispute over the performance rights are bigger than their particular situation.
“This is a dispute that needs to end up in court someday,” he said. “We just weren’t willing to be the pawn in their little battle.”
Lindsay said the venue has suffered a $15,000 loss — about 20 percent of the playhouse’s budget — by having to cancel the play suddenly. The 700 customers who already purchased tickets for the performances are eligible for a refund, but they’re also able to consider the cost of the ticket a donation to the playhouse.
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Lindsay said there were members of the cast who were angry and upset — some even resigned — but it was a battle they could not afford to fight.
“I find it ironic that a producing company in New York that is so earnestly putting on a play about injustice in the court system — racial injustice — is at the same time, with its other hand, exploiting the economic inequities or injustice in our court system that allows big corporations to squeeze out little arts organizations because we can’t afford the litigation they can afford,” he said.
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